by Blair Hurley
They bundled up and drove in silence to the churchyard where they bought their Christmas tree every year. This was normally an all-family task, full of cheer, of passionate arguments over the merits of balsam versus Douglas fir, but she did not ask why it was just the two of them. They shuffled down the aisles of bushy green. “Good batch this year,” he said. “Though in Colorado you probably saw bigger ones.”
This was the first that he had mentioned the trip; he was trying to broach something. He was so often silent, but she could feel his gentle, worried attention at all times. She struggled to meet him out on his tenuous limb. “Yeah. The mountains looked like they were covered in green fur.”
They walked through a channel of trees, feeling the snow dusting their shoulders, the night quiet of the churchyard. There was so little time. They were not supposed to be together. She sensed that by taking her here, her father was violating a code set by her mother. Soon they would choose a tree, and drive home with it tied to the roof, and retreat to their separate quarters.
“This one looks nice,” she said, pointing to a tall, stately Douglas fir.
“Handsome. The king of trees,” he agreed.
They stood back while a muscular man in three layers of coats hefted the tree onto the roof of the car. Struggling to tie a knot of twine, she heard her father greet someone on the other side of the car. She knew the voice—bright and operatic, projecting even in small rooms. Betsy Malley, another churchgoer. “I heard about your troubles, Bill, and I just want you to know we’ve been praying for you,” she caroled.
“Thank you, Betsy.”
“You know, we do all we can for our children, but sometimes they just cannot be helped.”
Nicole ducked against the warm protection of the car. She listened to her father’s steady murmur, informing Betsy that Nicole was back now, that everything was going to be all right.
“Lord be praised! And just in time for Christmas,” Betsy said. Finally her voice faded, along with the crunch of her heels in the snow. Nicole straightened and returned to the tangle of twine, but something was blurring her vision. She blinked hard, trying to clear her eyes.
“I think we need a bowline,” her father said. Then his hand was covering hers, his skilled fingers moving. That was what you could count on fathers to do, wasn’t it. To tie knots, and hammer nails, and open jars; to settle disputes and wipe tears. All with an air of friendly remove. And in return, you had to promise not to disappoint them.
Her father’s shoulders went up, and for a moment he held on to her hands. “You are back, right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Really? Really back?”
She pulled away, angry now. “Yes. Yes, I’m back.”
“Good.” Slowly his shoulders fell. He was shaking. Not as removed as she’d thought.
It scared her, this love. So much around her, so thick. Whether she deserved it or not.
She walked the neighborhood with crutches and then a plastic cane, passing the places where she and Jules had pressed up against each other with a sense of purpose: park benches, children’s playgrounds, even under the overpass to the highway once—had that been her? Now in the afternoons the underpass was full of sleeping homeless men, bundled in garbage bags. Had they been there when she and Jules snuck down one windy night? Had they watched?
She took the T downtown and walked the streets she knew near her school, then headed farther afield, to the dark pubs that didn’t card, the karaoke clubs where she and Eddie and Jules had rambled and wailed far past last call. She wandered by the fens and along the damp sides of the Muddy River, remembering school trips to study the pond life. Plastic bags tugged on branches in the wind; a lone child’s sneaker rested on the bridge. She walked on toward the MFA, hoping for a private moment with the Buddha statue. If she could sit in that dark, church-like space again, maybe she’d remember why she’d left in the first place.
When she got to the museum, the crowds in the Asian wing were heavy; she had to move in a zigzag around people in the last hall, her head low. The Zen temple was closed for restoration, a sign informed her at the end. No one was allowed to enter. On the sign, a cartoon samurai wagged a finger.
That evening, Paul found her on her bed, staring at Jules’s notebooks. “Dinner’s ready.”
“Thanks.” She turned a page of one notebook. Eight-point boxes drawn to look three-dimensional, filling the crinkled paper. Maybe it was some kind of code.
He hovered in the doorway. “I don’t know if I’m hungry tonight,” she said.
Paul sidled in. He was wearing a suit and tie. After the family dinner, he was taking Marion out for drinks and dancing. “Listen—there’s a reason that we’re here tonight. I want you to know first. I’m asking Marion to marry me.”
She looked up; something caught in her chest, trapping the air. The look on Paul’s face was wide-eyed and solemn. She thought she might cry. “Thanks for telling me,” she said. “That’s wonderful.”
He sat down on the bed beside her. “The reason I’m telling you first,” he said, “is that I want to know what you think. I’ve always thought—well, that you had high standards for what’s important in life. And that you knew what it takes to be happy. I’ve always thought you were very wise.”
She laughed; now she really was crying. “You’re kidding, right? I’m the screwup, remember?”
He shrugged. “You can be both.”
“Ha.” She loved him very much then. “I think—you have to risk everything. I think in a marriage, every day you have to tell the other person, ‘I’ll risk everything I’ve got for you.’” That was what had made Jules so easy to love, what no one else had understood about him. Every day he would have risked something terrible for her.
She reached up and touched Paul’s head. A Buddhist blessing.
He hugged her hard. “Okay. Okay, I’ll try.” He drew himself up.
It was like he was growing up right in front of her. “I’ll take care of you, you know.”
She nodded. It was sweet, really. And now, telling Jocelyn, she could see: she’d signed some kind of contract, of what shape their love would take.
He stood up and held out her cane. “Come on, nerd.”
For a few years after the accident, she had little time for prayer or meditation. She studied for her GED and took classes at a local college; she attended Paul and Marion’s wedding; she helped with Sunday dinners. First an apartment of her own, then a job with benefits, a car loan, good credit. You checked these accomplishments off a list and kept going. At first her mother tried to bring her back to church. Before she rented her own place, she’d find a silver cross on her pillow each night. Her mother tried getting her to come to church for Christmas, or to say a Hail Mary before bed. A succession of priests were invited for coffee and sandwiches and earnest talks about the faith in which one was raised. This was during the Catholic Church’s “Catholics Come Home” campaign. You could see the slogan on signs in churchyards and on flyers tucked under cars’ windshield wipers all over town. One hip young priest looked at her over his sunglasses and said, “You know, Catholics have the best tunes. If we get you when you’re young, we’ve got you for life.”
But Nicole flatly refused. She couldn’t be re-graced.
She read, cleaned houses, sold shoes, all in this state of disgrace. She was twenty-two, when all the people she’d gone to school with were just graduating from college, getting real jobs. And then her father was ill, and there was no time for the counseling her family had urged, no time for weeping, no time for prayer of any kind. Liver cancer was her life now. The life she had begun to see yawning before her—a stunted life, but a stable one—was slamming shut.
Her father was stoic through that year. His father had died young of liver disease, and he began to tell them that this had already set the clock ticking. They protested. He smiled, grimly. But Nicole knew the real reason for the insidious arithmetic happening in his body, the growth of something black a
nd evil in someone so good. Every now and then, when they were playing checkers or Nicole was reading to him in bed, she’d pause and look at him. I’m the one who’s made you sick, she tried to say. It’s me. It’s the anguish I’ve caused, the time away, all your worrying and searching. That’s what’s killing you now. Won’t you admit it?
He’d just look back. “Today’s a good day, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, it’s a good day, Dad.”
Sometimes he did seem worried. “You’d tell me if you were using drugs again, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. I mean, I haven’t used anything since—I came back.” For her, the pill taking hadn’t progressed to the point of need. Her sensitive stomach and fear of damaging herself, her kidneys, her teeth, had kept her walking a shaky line of control.
“And you’d tell me, if you did?”
“I promise. Please—don’t worry about me.” Don’t waste your energy on me. Please.
He looked pained. “Of course I will. About Paul, too, and your mother. You worry about the people you love. That’s not a bad thing.”
They got used to the wan lighting of hospital rooms, the calming swaths of beige and gray, the language of narcotics, anti-nausea meds, laxatives. They got to know the smells that clung to their clothing, stubborn as cigarette smoke: saline, urine, thin, watery vomit. Through it all her mother remained calm, surprisingly calm. There was work to do. She brought knitting with her to waiting rooms, sent Nicole for meals, let Paul handle the paperwork. At night, when it was time to leave for the day, she sat on the edge of the bed, looking at their father, and she’d smile at him, and stroke his hair back from his face. This was what she’d always done when they were young and sick, when Nicole had her bronchitis and was frightened that she’d never get well. Her hand on his forehead, gentle and sure, and his eyes closing with relief under her touch. Nicole always had to look away.
On some afternoons they left early and went to church. There they could pretend that it was old times and sit together quietly in prayer and then each light a candle and go home. To throw a tantrum about this seemed petty, un-Buddhist, so she sat with Paul; but she would not take Communion. “They wouldn’t let me anyway,” she told him.
And at night she walked down by the river, listening for the whistles and cries of the feral kids that every city could hide. She watched the tall trays of day-old doughnuts being loaded into white vans, bound for homeless shelters. She stood under streetlights in parking lots, listening to the older men talk and pass bottles back and forth. She lined up at the back doors of churches instead of at the front. She drove the late-night streets of her tiny bounded city, daring herself to take the exit for the interstate. She kept road maps in stacks on the floor of her apartment and pored over escape routes, the next path she’d take. Most of her was still out there, still digging through dumpsters and sleeping on the hard, cold ground. Jules was still alive; he had just gone away for a while, and she had to wait, quietly, her entire self in abeyance, for his return.
She had to keep saying to herself, “This is real, this is real.” She meditated, telling herself that she was not dreaming. She was here; her father was dying. Awake, I breathe in. Awake, I breathe out.
At the hospital, there was a bulletin board in the hall facing her father’s room. She found herself staring at it, examining the offers for therapeutic massage, for grief counseling. One day, a new flyer appeared in the center of the board:
PEACEFUL HEALING ZEN CENTER
Specializing in meditation and authentic Japanese Zen ceremony.
For Zen Buddhists or recreational meditators of all skill levels. Find healing with the ancient spiritual art of meditation.
Accredited roshi Zen master with years of experience in Rinzai Zen. If you or a loved one is suffering, find hope and healing in Zen.
Sit and discover yourself. Walk-ins welcome.
She tore off one of the address slips at the bottom and put it in her jacket pocket. In the next weeks, as her father weakened, she’d thumb the slip into a velvety leather.
When her father was released from the hospital and at home, he started having trouble finding words for things. His brow would furrow and he’d say a word that was clearly the wrong one, not what he meant. They played checkers in silence, moving the pieces slowly across the board. Sometimes his hand on a piece would pause, and he’d seem to be lost in thought, frozen, until she gently nudged his hand to move again. Like with a clock that’s winding down, sometimes a shake could get him moving for a little longer. Then he was too weak to play at all, and her mother simply knelt by the bed, holding his hand and speaking quietly of favorite memories—the time he’d picked her up for their first date in a car with a missing fender, the trip to France, the snowy cathedrals, games of tennis in late afternoon sun. He didn’t move, but his eyes nodded along with her, grew with sympathy, crinkled with laughter.
When Nicole left her parents’ house at night, she couldn’t bring herself to go home. She’d circle her apartment complex on foot, peering into the ground-floor windows. She watched families watching television, kids fighting, old people puttering around kitchens. She leaned close to a windowsill. You could live on just the dregs of another person’s life, she thought. Then a flashlight swept over her and someone yelled and she ran, becoming feral with the cats and the rats.
She stayed away from her apartment that night, afraid of being caught by her neighbors. She walked the wet, wintry streets instead, hood up, homeless again. She knew the secret places of any city where a person could disappear. She knew the bridge overpasses, the sewer systems, the library ventilation grates. Every bundle of blankets looked like a friend. That one could be Jules, with the lighter illuminating his face as he smoked, telling ghost stories to other runaways. Or that one, asleep and tucked protectively around his lover. She walked for hours through the underbelly of the city.
When she finally returned to her apartment, it was past midnight and there was a message on her machine: her father had fallen unconscious. By the time she got to the house, he had stopped breathing. Her mother sat on the bed beside him, very still, looking away. Paul had called the hospice, and a nurse from the night shift, a large, bustling, cheery woman, arrived to take his pulse and to clear away his box of painkillers. Before she arrived Nicole had already pocketed an orange bottle of the stuff she and Jules used to take; she turned it in her pocket now, just thinking. Just thinking.
The nurse felt for a pulse for a long quiet moment, then said, “He’s with Jesus now.”
“How do you know—how do you know he’s with Jesus?” Nicole bristled.
“Nicole,” said Paul quietly. Their mother didn’t move or speak; she was far away.
“No—I want to know.” The anger she’d wanted to feel all this time was suddenly here, suddenly free. “How dare you? A nurse, telling us about, about medicine—how dare you?”
The nurse held up her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Your family checked ‘Catholic’ on the form. I presumed—” She bowed her head. “I’m sorry. The funeral home will come pick him up in the morning.”
Nicole and Paul went to their childhood bedrooms. A while later, Nicole’s mother appeared in her doorway. Nicole inched over, and the two of them curled up together, sleeping deep and motionless until the undertaker knocked on the door.
The three of them drove home from the funeral parlor in silence; here they were, exhausted, and the thing they had dreaded was now over. But any relief vanished when they walked through the door: the house full of his things, his reading glasses, paperweights, clocks.
They ate. What else do you do? And sat in the dim kitchen, half-smiling at each other. Paul got up to make a phone call, presumably to tell Marion he wouldn’t be home tonight. “I have to know,” said Nicole to her mother, “what he thought about my running away.”
“I wish you hadn’t gone,” her mother said. Tears rimmed her eyes. “He knew that it wasn’t spiteful. But I wish you hadn’t gone.”
&
nbsp; “It was something I needed to do.”
Her mother pressed her hand. “But don’t you understand? What makes you think you had the right? My daughter. My only daughter.”
That was the only time they spoke of her running away. Paul returned and stood in the doorway; they both looked at him, glad for his constancy, glad for the way he took care of things. “Come here,” said their mother. She got up; she was still taller than both of them, slim as a reed, elegant and finely dressed. She put out her hands, pulling them close. “I’m glad for both of you,” she said. “I’m truly thankful. Lord, thank you.” They bowed their heads before her, waiting for a blessing, something that would protect them when they left the safe afternoon light of the kitchen.
But she had no blessing for them, and eventually they released one another and retreated to their own secret corners of the house.
Here. Here was the place where the funeral sat in her mind, inert as stone, the details exact. Here, her mother struggling to select a tie. This one. No, this one. I gave him this one. Suddenly frantic. This one for winter. This one for summer.
Here was the service, the final Mass. Here was the Office of the Dead, the cry: God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. Here was the priest in his white vestments, assuring them of the life that goes on beyond life.
Here, Paul talking to relatives in low, tasteful tones. Later, though, there he was out back in the yard, muddying his nice pants, staring at the neighbor’s dog barking through the fence. Nicole could see him from the kitchen window. She’d always be able to see him like this. Was he talking to their father? Was he praying? The memory was somehow dear.
And here she was, walking in the woods the night of the ceremony, farther than she’d ever gone, all the way to the train tracks. It was hard to climb the fence with her bad ankle, but she made it over. The cold air was quicksilver sliding through her dress and down her body. Here the tracks receded into the darkness. Here she finally knew why she had come: she was waiting for a train to come and hit her. She was sick: deeply sick, spiritually sick. Jules was gone and her father was gone and she was to blame. Far away was the light of an approaching train. A growing rush of sound. Here is the Office of the Dead.